Monthly Archives: February 2022

Good Gardening Soil for Northeast Florida

Good gardening soil is a loose mix of air, water, minerals, and organic matter including humus, roots, and organisms. Of the 18 essential elements for plant growth and development nine are called macronutrients with the most common being carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O), which are key for the production of carbohydrates, proteins, and nucleic acids. Carbon makes up about 50% of soil by weight. All the organic matter in your garden, including compost, animal manure, and leaf litter, are mostly carbon. Additional macronutrients are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and sulphur (S). The nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) constitute the NPK formula associated with fertilizers as they are key to plant growth and development. Lack of macronutrients in soil inhibits proper plant growth and development.

Micronutrients include iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), boron (B), molybdenum (Mo), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), chlorine (Cl), nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co), sodium (S), and silicon (Si). “Deficiencies in any of these nutrients—particularly the macronutrients—can adversely affect plant growth,” according to UC Davis University of California. “Depending on the specific nutrient, a lack can cause stunted growth, slow growth, or chlorosis (yellowing of the leaves). Extreme deficiencies may result in leaves showing signs of cell death.”

credit Medium.com

Essential factors for good gardening soil include the physical properties, mineral composition, pH, water holding capacity, and the absence of toxins. Healthy soil is filled with nutrients, microbes, and minerals that provide food for plants, help them grow strong roots, and help prevent diseases. Earth Works provides a variety of specially formulated good gardening soil to enhance Northeast Florida gardeners success in containers, raised beds, and directly in the ground.

Good Gardening Soil Available at Earth Works include:
Black Gold Natural & Organic Succulent & Cactus Potting Mix Soil is a Sungro Horticulture product recommended in indoor and outdoor containers and with houseplants. Ingredients include Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss, Bark, Earthworm Castings, Horticultural Grade Perlite, Pumice, or Cinders.

Black Gold Natural & Organic Potting Mix Soil is recommended in raised beds, indoor and outdoor containers, houseplants, hanging baskets, and window boxes. It’s appropriate for growing bedding plants, vegetables, herbs, annuals, and perennials. Ingredients include Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss, Composted or Aged Bark, Compost, Earthworm Castings, Horticultural Grade Perlite, Pumice, or Cinders, and Organic Grade Fertilizer. Also included is RESiLIENCE, a silicon-enriched additive that may enhance plant growth, flowering and improve resistance to wilting.


Fafard Pro Potting Mix Soil is recommended for indoor and outdoor all-purpose container plantings. Ingredients include Vermiculite, Perlite, Compost, Pine Bark, Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss, Dolomite Lime, a Wetting Agent, and RESiLIENCE.

Fafard Ultra Container Mix with Extended Feed Soil is recommended in hanging baskets, window boxes, indoor and outdoor containers. It’s appropriate for growing bedding plants, annuals, perennials, houseplants, seeds, cuttings, vegetables and herbs. Ingredients include Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss, Pine Bark, Compost, RESiLIENCE®, Perlite, Dolomite Lime, Wetting Agent, and Water-Holding Crystals.

FoxFarm Planting Mix Soil is a blend of soil amendments, including aged forest products, sphagnum peat moss, and earthworm castings.  This is an all-purpose soil. The aged forest products and peat moss in FoxFarm Original Planting Mix may make it more effective at holding moisture around the roots of plants.

Happy Frog Original Potting Soil is a FoxFarm product designed for container plantings. It includes earthworm castings, bat guano, and aged forest products amended with soil microbes.

Lucky Dog K-9 Kube Growers Blend Soil is a FoxFarm product for rooted cuttings, and young plant starts for use in both indoor and outdoor cultivation and contains earthworm castings, perlite, peat moss, and mycorrhizal fungi.

Ocean Forest Potting Soil is a FoxFarm product designed for container gardeners. Ingredients include a blend of aged forest products, sphagnum peat moss, earthworm castings, bat guano, fish emulsion, and crab meal. The Aged forest products, sandy loam, and sphagnum peat moss give Ocean Forest a light, aerated texture.

ProMix Organic Premium Organic Vegetable and Herb Mix Soil is for us directly in the ground or containers and is great for fruits, herbs, and vegetables. Ingredients include Canadian sphagnum peat moss, Peat humus, Compost, Perlite, Gypsum, Limestone (for pH adjustment), Organic fertilizer, and Mycorrhizae.

Wild Earth Mix Soil bags and bulk are all-purpose soil for container gardens, raised beds, and use directly in the ground. Ingredients include organic compost, aged forest products, kelp, and peat humus.

For comprehensive solutions to your specific lawn, garden, and landscaping need, contact us at 904-996-0712. Earth Works operates a retail Garden Center/Plant Nursery in Jacksonville and provides landscaping, hardscaping, water features, lawn care service, lawn spraying, and drainage solutions. 

Earth Works proudly serves clients in Northeast Florida, including Jacksonville, Ponte Vedra Beach, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Nocatee, St. Johns, Fleming Island, Orange Park, Middleburg, Green Cove Springs, Amelia Island, Fernandina, and St. Augustine.

Proper Palm Pruning

Proper palm pruning beautifies these stately specimens in the landscape and protects them from stress from poor care and environmental pressure.
Benefits of Proper Palm Pruning Include:
• Preserving the health of the palm.
• Improving their appearance.
• Eliminating places for pests to hide.
• Reducing wind resistance during bad weather.
• Reducing fire hazards from the highly flammable dead fronds.
There are self-cleaning palms for people who don’t want to worry about pruning. Self-cleaning palms include King Alexander (Archontophoenix alexandrae), Royal palm (Roystonea regia), Chinese Fan palm (Livistona chinensis), and Christmas palm (Adonidia merrillii).

The first step in proper palm pruning is to inspect and assess the source of any damage to the palms. Trimming your palm tree is no substitute for appropriate fertilization and care. You can’t fix mineral deficiencies and damage from pests, pathogens, and disease by pruning the tree. 

What Tools do I Need to Properly Prune Palms?
Proper palm pruning tools include: gloves, eye protection, pruning shears, loppers, telescoping pole saw, ladder, rubbing alcohol, bleach, or other comparable disinfectants to clean tools before and after use to avoid spreading pathogens and disease between plants. Tree trimming services should use ladders or a bucket truck rather than climbing with spiked shoes that damage the trunks and invite pests, pathogens, and diseases. Ask others who prune your palm trees to disinfect their tools and don’t allow them to climb them with spiked shoes.

How Often Should I Trim my Palms?
Typically once per year in Spring is the best time and frequency to trim palm trees. Avoid removing the healthy green fronds. Instead, focus on eliminating brown and yellowing palm fronds damaged at the end of their life cycle. The fruiting flower stalks, or inflorescence, can be removed at this time to conserve the plants’ energy and reduce hazards from falling fruit and the corresponding mess, odor, and insect attraction. 

Proper Palm Pruning Techniques
Start pruning below the canopy and work up and around the tree to a horizontal frond position like arms on a clock at 9 and 3. Palms are monocots, plants that emerge from one leaf. Each new leaf emerges from the apical meristem, commonly referred to as the heart of the palm at the very top of the tree. “Death of the apical meristem in a palm results in the death of that stem in clustering species and death of the entire palm in single-stem species,” according to the University of Florida IFAS. “It also means that stem wounds, which would eventually be compartmentalized and grown over in dicot trees, are permanent in palms.”
Due to the circumference of the palm trunks continuing to expand trim fronds 1/2-3/4″ back from the tree trunk on smaller palms such as Pygmy date palm (Phoenix roebelinii) and 4-6″ from the trunk on large palm trees. The remaining portion of the frond on the trunk is referred to as the boot, which will die and in most species form a crisscrossing pattern that will eventually fall off or can be carefully removed.

The Sylvester date palm tree (Phoenix sylvestris) is known for its signature diamond-cut trunk. To create the diamond-cut tree farms prune for this look with a reciprocating saw that prevents trunk damage while exposing their orange genetic coloration. Although the color will fade in the months and years ahead it can be restored by pressure washing. Loppers and pole saws are recommended for Sylvester date palm tree annual pruning and a reciprocating saw, NOT a chainsaw when striving to duplicate the diamond cut.
The beauty of your tropical landscape will increase along with the health of your palms by using these proper palm pruning techniques.

https://youtu.be/v4e6ypVQ3nY

For comprehensive solutions to your specific lawn, garden, and landscaping need, contact us at 904-996-0712. Earth Works operates a retail Garden Center/Plant Nursery in Jacksonville and provides landscaping, hardscaping, water features, lawn care service, lawn spraying, and drainage solutions. 

Earth Works proudly serves clients in Northeast Florida, including Jacksonville, Ponte Vedra Beach, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Nocatee, St. Johns, Fleming Island, Orange Park, Middleburg, Green Cove Springs, Amelia Island, Fernandina, and St. Augustine.

 

6 Essential February Lawn and Garden Tips

Consider these six essential February lawn and garden tips for a beautiful close to winter and a healthy, and robust Spring season ahead.

1) In February, continue protecting plants from frost and freeze damage. While the threat of frost and freezing temperatures vary on average the last freeze day in Jacksonville is February 15 and January 23 in coastal Jacksonville Beach. However, on January 30 Jacksonville Beach reached a low temperature of 31 while at Jacksonville International Airport (JIA) they recorded a low of 22F with the lowest temperature ever recorded on that date being 20F back in 1966. Where you live has a significant bearing on the risk of frost and freezing temperatures. JIA recorded six below-freezing temperature days in January, whereas there was just one on the 30th at Craig Airport. Even with a warmer than usual Winter resulting from La Nina January was unpredictably cold. The News4Jax Insider reports that forecast models suggest that, “starting Feb. 23, the Eastern U.S. should begin to warm and warm considerably, pointing to an early start to spring.” With the damage already done, there will be many people shopping to replace plants in the coming months. Don’t be blindsided by another frost or freeze!

2) Rake, mulch, or compost leaves, but don’t leave them unattended on your lawn turf. While many deciduous trees drop leaves in Autumn and Winter, the evergreen Live oak typically sheds its leaves over several weeks between February and March and then immediately flushes out a crop of new leaves. After shedding their leaves, oaks follow up by dropping male flowers (catkins), which are loaded with pollen and have the texture of steel wool that can easily clog pond and pool filters. When unattended leaf litter and catkins can smother your lawn turf. While proponents of native landscapes aren’t concerned with grass in the landscape some community HOAs, for instance, require lawns to be well maintained and millions of families enjoy a beautiful well-kept lawn. While we provide lawn care services we appreciate landscaping with Florida native plants that are adapted to area climate and soil conditions and have landscape designers ready to work with you in developing whatever your preference of lawn and garden.

3) Keep weeds on your lawn under control by hand pulling or use of a pre-emergent herbicide before average temperatures reach 65-70F. As temperatures warm heading into Spring, the threat from the Winter weeds is replaced by the emergence of warm-season weeds. In our temperate climate, there is some crossover in the seasonal varieties of lawn weeds.
-Florida perennial weeds include buttonweed, clover, dallisgrass, dandelion, nutsedge, and dollarweed.
-Florida annual weeds include chickweed, crabgrass, beggarweed, pulsey, goosegrass, and spurge.
Earth Works Lawn Care division eliminates these concerns with weed spraying and fertilization services.

Weed And Feed products typically include pre-emergents. UF recommends March 1 for the earliest Weed and Feed applications in North Florida. “You will not injure your lawn by waiting to fertilize but you can certainly injure your lawn by fertilizing too early,” writes Larry Williams, the Residential Horticulture Agent for the UF/IFAS Extension Office in Okaloosa County. Difficulties in avoiding too late applications of pre-emergent herbicides and too early fertilization give some credence to using herbicides and fertilizers separately. Read more about When Should I Apply Weed And Feed.

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4) Do not forget to water your lawn throughout February when receiving less than two rain events per week. Consistent with La Nina weather forecasts, Jacksonville’s rainfall for January was below average, receiving only one inch of precipitation compared to the annual January average of three inches. We are under once per week irrigation restrictions in Duval County until the second Sunday in March, according to Chapter 366 of the City’s Ordinance Code. However, there are exceptions for new landscaping and there are no restrictions on hand watering.

5) Throughout the Winter months, including February, it’s recommended to plant cold-hardy annuals such as alyssum, delphinium, dusty millers, ornamental kale, and cabbage, along with violas that hold up to our coldest temperatures. “Trees and shrubs that will be in bloom include red maple, star magnolia, and spirea,” according to the University of Florida. “Despite the cooler weather, some gardeners can begin to plant warm-season crops, while others should stick to plants that can survive the cold.” Areas around the St. Johns River, its tributaries, and the beaches stay significantly warmer than other inland areas.

Delphinium Magic Fountain

6) Regularly inspect houseplants and those brought indoors during the winter. Be watchful for pests such as Spider mites that form webs along leaf margins. Spider mites and various other pests can be effectively treated with Neem oil. Rotate plants to provide them 360-degree access to inspect and for them to get the best use of available light sources.

Spider mites and their web on Alocasia

Don’t neglect plants brought indoors that might be bunched together, not allowing adequate light and inspection access. Watch for signs of too much or too little water and sunlight. Some plants such as the Heart-shaped, Hoya kerrii will turn yellow from too much light or too little water. Succulents can begin turning purple from various causes, including sudden light and temperature changes, too much light or the wrong wavelength provided by certain grow lights. If having an issue with your indoor plants, take photos and bring them in to speak with an associate at the Earth Works garden center.

Inspect houseplants: This Hoya kerrii turned yellow from too much light or too little water.

We hope the February lawn and garden tips benefit your efforts and for comprehensive solutions to all your specific lawn, garden, and landscaping needs, contact us at 904-996-0712. 

Earth Works operates a retail Garden Center/Plant Nursery in Jacksonville and provides landscaping, hardscaping, water features, lawn care service, lawn spraying, and drainage solutions. 

Earth Works proudly serves clients in Northeast Florida, including Jacksonville, Ponte Vedra Beach, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Nocatee, St. Johns, Fleming Island, Orange Park, Middleburg, Green Cove Springs, Amelia Island, Fernandina, and St. Augustine.

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